Revision as of 04:32, 7 February 2007

Media Info Examples

Contributors

Introduction

Examples of what people actually publish on the Web when discussing, linking to, referring to media. This is focused predominantly on time based media such as audio and video, but may consider aspects of static media as well such as still images.

Emphasis on Practical, Simple, and Minimal

Since all previous known attempts at this problem area have ended up quite complex and over-designed, this attempt will place simplicity and minimalism first and foremost.

Thus for now, this document is deliberately restricted to examples that are:

Actual examples in practice on the Web with URLs to the originals (note, all *-examples pages should be like this, but previous attempts at documenting media info examples have mostly ignored this requirement, and thus it is necessary to be explicit).

Representative of very common publishing behavior on the Web. This focus on common, representative examples is essential. If possible, include an estimate of the number of similar examples. E.g. ~10k.

Any examples added which do not conform to these requirements will be deleted.

Any generic analysis will also be deleted. Analysis before examples is premature. Once there are sufficient media-info-examples, and hopefully a simple/clean listing of media-info-formats, we'll hopefully start a media-info-brainstorming page to do aggregate analysis of the examples.

Real World Examples

Overall Notes About Examples

These examples are organized into a short list of top level media categories, in the hopes that it will be easier to determine if there are media specific publishing behaviors, in addition to common behaviors across multiple types of media. Some may be subcategorized and distinguished by whether it was published by an individual publisher or a service:

Audio (Speech, Music)

Video

Photos

The numbers after some of the examples' descriptions are based on numbers found pulling in media records at Dabble. Others may have higher numbers and would be encouraged to restate them if that's true.

Audio

Speech

Publication of audio speeches on blogs is often called "podcasting". In essence though, it is simply audio speech publishing. Quotes of audio files are beginning to appear, and publishers are putting up files with links to other audio files they've quoted from. Most audio appears to often have the same base elements as video and photos, with the exception of quotes.

This example has a Title, Html URL, description or summary, quotes URLs and descriptions, licence, creator, tags and publish time and date. +10k records.

media published from a blog, Jake Steinfeld's Audio Blog NOTE: this record had trouble because mediawiki blocks any DOTbiz domains and so while this domain coincidentally has a DOTbizbyjake.com name that is not a TLD, it was still blocked in the loading of the page with this example. So please adjust the URL manually and then visit the site.

This example has a Title, Html URL, media URL, creator and publish time and date. +10k records.

Whole page is for one album (a mash-up remix of a Portishead album). Has Album Track Number and Title (linked to mp3) and Remixer's name, plus cover art. Also a link to the BitTorrent download of the whole album.

Extensive database with labels, artists, albums, etc. Also has extremely detailed submission guidelines that probably qualify for a media-info format.

Video

Publication of video on blogs often goes by "videoblogging", "vlogging", "VODcasting", or "video podcasting". The typical process involves publishing a direct link to the video file within the blog entry. The blog entry can, but does not have to, include an embedded video player. Many videos include a thumbnail jpg which is clickable to the media object and player. Some video includes links to those other source videos, photos and audio that have been quoted. Most videos have the same base elements as photos and audio, with the exception of quotes.

Individual publishing of video

FreeVlog: the most popular tutorial on the web describing the videoblogging process by combining free tools and services (Blogger, OurMedia/Internet Archive, FeedBurner).

According to this process, a videoblog entry contains:

Direct link to the video file

Clickable thumbnail image/screen capture of the video

Contextual information about the video (title, description, etc) is usually contained in the surrounding blog entry

This example has a Title, Html URL, media URL, description or summary, creator, quote URLs and description, license and publish time. This example also "auto-plays", that is, starts playing the video in the normal browser/HTML view upon loading of the page. +20k

This example has a thumbnail (class=category_minilist_item_video_preview_image), with an Html URL, thumbnail URL, certain info (class=category_minilist_infos), title (class=category_minilist_item_title), href to country tag (with image icon with class=category_minilist_item_flag, image title set to country name).

Photos

A few photos online have region annotation and quoting. But as tools are developed that are usable for mass publishers, this will likely increase.

Many videos have thumbnails that are jpgs.

Many videos use pictures and therefore the pictures themselves are quotes from the video.

Most photos have the same elements as videos and audio, with the exception of quotes.

Notes on Existing Practices

Mary Hodder:

We are finding as we look at thousands of user generated media records, that all have titles, creator, at least a default licensing, most have tags whose functionality is made available through the hosting service (the richer the media, the more likely tagging goes toward 100%), Html and media URLs, thumbnail URLs, publishing date, and about 25% have quoting information of some sort (quotes of video or audio, and region quotes of photos).

Tags apparently appear at the upload point on 61% of photos in Flickr, and within a short period, 80+% have tags. 12% of users in Flickr apparently tag photos other than their own.

Manu Sporny:

There is an increasing number of sites that link to different methods of acquiring content displayed on a web page. These may include links to high-quality, or full versins of the media being described on the page. The various options include: free, streaming with ads, one-time purchase, and rental.

Summaries, long descriptions and reviews are also prevalent in some of the content.

Next Steps

Add more real-world, simple, minimal examples.

Research and organize existing/previous media-info-formats, with a focus on formats for publishing common, user-visible media information.

See Also

media-metadata-examples - previous attempt to catalog and organize top down metadata systems generated by engineers and committees, as examples of elements, and includes formats which should be in a separate page. Useful as a source of research but this microformat needs to embrace the bottomup ways users are publishing photos, video and audio online.